INTERVIEW-Pentagon sees decisions on U.S. weather satellite in next months

September 26, 2013|Reuters

By Andrea Shalal-Esa

WASHINGTON, Sept 26 (Reuters) - The Pentagon is expected toreach decisions in coming months on how to meet its weatherforecasting needs after the 2012 termination of a nearly $15billion program being built by Northrop Grumman Corp, asenior official told Reuters on Thursday.

Douglas Loverro, deputy assistant defense secretary forspace policy, said Pentagon officials were weighing thepossibility of replacing the large satellite system thatNorthrop was slated to build with a series of smaller, lessexpensive satellites in the $200 million to $300 million range.

Those decisions, expected in several months, would help thePentagon move toward what it describes as a "disaggregated"approach to national security satellites, said Loverro.

By building and launching a larger number of smallersatellites, officials have said they hope to reduce the threatthat U.S. national security needs could be compromised by anattack on a single large satellite.

Smaller satellites are also cheaper to launch into orbit andtake less time to build. The Air Force is also looking at thepossibility of loading sensors onto other government orcommercial satellites - a process called "hosted payloads."

Northrop and other big satellite makers such as Boeing Co and Lockheed Martin Corp, as well as many smallerplayers in the satellite and rocket launch business, are waitingfor details about how the Air Force plans to meet the military'sneed for weather forecasts.

The Air Force launched an analysis of alternatives after the2010 collapse of a multibillion-dollar weather satellite programknown as the National Polar-Orbiting Operational EnvironmentalSatellite System, or NPOESS, that was being built by NorthropGrumman for the Air Force, NASA and the Commerce Department'sNational Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

"There are many of us who believe that we will save moneywhen we go to a more resilient architecture because we can usesmaller satellites," Loverro told Reuters.

Loverro said the Air Force and the Pentagon's CostAssessment and Program Evaluation office were now analyzing themilitary's weather forecasting needs, and some funding for a newweather satellite program would be included in the fiscal 2015budget plan now being drafted.

He said the analysis was confirming what many officials hadlong suspected: "We could do with a lot less weather investmentthan we had."

With Pentagon spending due to decline from projected levels,many companies are exploring ways to meet the government'semerging need for more affordable satellites.

Air Force officials in April said the follow-on weatherprogram would likely include a variety of options rather thanrelying on a single complex and large-scale satellite packedfull of a variety of different sensors.

Boeing has unveiled a family of smaller satellite prototypescalled Phantom Phoenix that could be quickly and affordablymanufactured and configured for specific missions.

Lockheed this week submitted a proposal for a program run bythe Air Force that is exploring ways to put sensors oncommercial satellites.

Other smaller firms are also looking for a foothold in thenext-generation military weather satellite market.

Moog Inc announced in April that it had invested inPlanetIQ, a start-up company that aims to launch 12 small 75-kg(165-lb) satellites that would provide highly accurate andreal-time temperature and other weather data.

Exelis Inc, which builds payloads, or instruments,for a variety of satellites, including weather missions, is alsohoping to play a role in the new weather satellite system.